Monday, June 30, 2014

Staunton, June 30 – Olga Kryshtanovskaya,
head of the Center for the Study of Elites at the Academy of Sciences Institute
of Sociology and Russia’s most distinguished student of elites and their
rotation, says that “Putin’s successor is already in his closest entourage” and
that Putin may even decide who it will be.

Indeed, she
suggests, the Ukrainian crisis, depending on how it plays out, may determine
whether the Kremlin leader remains in power or chooses to go.While those closest to Putin are putting on a
brave face, they are unhappy about restrictions on their travel to the West,
their access to property there, and the ability of their children to study
there.

A slightly broader part of the elite
is suffering a bit from the sanctions, she continues, but “if the West will be
able to convince its own business and a serious outflow of capital from Russia
begins, the borders are closed, and credit card arrangements are disrupted ...
this will affect not only the elites but also the middle class.”

So far, the sociologist says,
ordinary people are backing Putin because of patriotism and because sanctions
don’t affect them. In most cases, she continues, the population “can hardly
calculate” how sanctions are already affecting the country and are pleased to
float along with “a romantic wave of patriotism.”

But if first those closest to Putin
and then broader groups start to hurt, Kryshtanovskaya says, opposition to the
Kremlin leader could increase because “no one wants to reduce his standard of
living, even for the high goals of patriotism.” Such a situation would be very
dangerous, and parts of the elite could begin making their own calculations
about the future.

She points out
that “if the events in Ukraine had taken place somewhat earlier, in 2011-2012, they
might have divided the political class instead of uniting much of it as now. At
that time, Kryshtanovskaya says, “there were signs of the fragmentation of the elite,”
between Putin’s “conservative majority” and Dmitry Medvedev’s “small group of
liberals.”

Putin was able to “consolidate the
political class and neutralize the opposition,” and those around him who might
have become his opponents were overwhelmed by the patriotic “wave” that has
swept the country since the annexation of Crimea and sent Putin’s ratings
through the roof.

Of course, she continues, “there is
a danger that [today’s] euphoria will be replaced by depression. And this will
happen if nothing is done.Fine,” people
will say, “you took Crimea. Hurrah! But what next?Enormous costs? A decline in the standard of
living? If so, then depression will come.”

Putin and his entourage certainly
understand this.He and his people “understand
it and are thinking how not to allow it to happen.Initially, they will continue to point to what could
happen to Russia and its stability if it were to follow the Ukrainian
path.No one wants that, Kryshtanovskaya
says.

“Ukraine has given Russia a lesson
about what not to do.To lose stability
and push one’s country into chaos.” That is easy to do, she continues, but
escaping from chaos is “difficult.” Putin has made his career by presenting
himself as the guarantor of stability, and how he has added to that someone who
has given Russians a reason for pride.

“People want to be proud of their
country!” But attitudes can change and the 2018 presidential elections are a
long way off.At present, all polls show
that “the population does not see an alternative to Putin.” And neither does
the elite.But this means less than some
may think because “in all authoritarian regimes, it is that way: there is no
alternative to the leader.”

Were things to continue exactly as they are, Putin
could win without any difficulty. But they are unlikely to.And that in turn raises the question: “Does
Putin himself want to serve another term as president? Or will he prefer to
play the role of a kind of Deng Xiaoping,” an eler statesman who doesn’t have
to deal with day to day problems.

Putin is “intelligent and is
[undoubtedly] considering various possibilities,” Kryshtanovskaya says.“It is possible that he will consider that
for the preservation of the stability of the system, it will be better to go
into the shadows, to find ‘successor No. 2,’ and to help him win his own
authority in the elections.”

The sociologist does not say this,
but such a strategy not only represents a recapitulation of the way in which
Putin himself came to power but could allow him to have a far longer influence
over the future of the country than might be the case if he has to face the
inevitable problems that any Kremlin leader would.

“If that scenario is realistic,” she
says, “then such a successor is already in the immediate entourage of the president.”
And it may be, Kryshtanovskaya concludes, because “Putin has more than once
demonstrated that he is capable of the most unexpected and out of the ordinary
steps.”

And that in term means, the elite
specialist concludes, that “intrigue about his true plans will be preserved
until the very end.”

Staunton, June 30 – Roman Silantyev,
notorious for his attacks on Muslim in the Russian Federation but close to the
Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian security
agencies, says that the FSB plans for “the liquidation of radical Islamic
organizations in Crimea.”

Silantyev told Rosbalt last
week that the Russian security services were preparing to do so because they have
identified extremist groups in several mosques and Muslim educational institutions
in Crimea and will close them because they have become “bases for religious
extremists” (rosbalt.ru/federal/2014/06/24/1283947.html).

The Moscow activist’s words
are worrisome not only because he has an expansive definition of Muslim “extremism”
– it often seems he includes in that category any Muslim trend he and the
Russian authorities don’t like – but also because he has repeatedly attacked the Muslim
Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Crimea as extremist and “a branch” of the
Crimean Tatar Mejlis (golosislama.ru/news.php?id=24132).

As Golos Islama points out,
Silantyev recently attracted widespread attention by his call to liquidate what he said were 700,000 Wahhabis
in Russia in order to prevent “the threat of terrorist actions” there.
Apparently, the site added, “Silantyev still hasn’t calculated how many Muslims
need to be killed in Crimea.”

But despite the flamboyance
of his language, Silantyev often has been among the first Russian commentator
to talk about crackdowns by the Russian security services and thus his predictions
for what will happen next in Crimea and to its Muslims, most of whom are
Crimean Tatars, needs to be taken seriously.

Staunton, June 30 – Three unwritten
laws which governed the lives of Soviet people have resumed operation in
Vladimir Putin’s Russia and increasingly set the terms for the interaction
between his country’s population and the state, and they are “just as universal
and all-embracing,” a Russian blogger suggests,” as the laws of Newton.

These three laws, Yury Magarshak, a
Russian who now lives in New York, says are as follows:

·“The
first law of Soviet nature is if it seems to you that the Head of the Country or
his oracles (the foreign minister, ideologues, and the lead articles of ‘Pravda’)
are speaking the truth, this means that you are either insufficiently informed
or are under hypnosis.

·“The
second law of Soviet nature is if it seems to you that you understand what is
actually taking place, look at the situation more attentively.After that, convince yourself that everything
is absolutely not as you imagined.

·And
“the third law of Soviet nature is if the Leaders of the Soviet State say
something which appears humane and human, this means that they either have
already committed or intend to commit something especially horrifying” (echo.msk.ru/blog/ym4/1349934-echo/).

Magarshak says that he became convinced
of the “universality of [these] three laws of Soviet nature “whenever he had
any dealings with the Authorities, read a newspaper, or turned on ‘central
television.’”

Things began to change at the end of
the 1980s, and that trend continued in the 1990s, he says. Even the leaders of
the country began to speak like human beings.“It seemed to some that the Soviet System in Russia had receded into the
past.” But such conclusions have proved to be wrong.Once again, “the Laws of Soviet Nature are
again being fulfilled in Russia.”

At first this process was “step by
step,” but after the Sochi Olympiad, it picked up speed and became
all-embracing.Government television re-introduced “the Five Minute Hate (exactly as
Orwell described)” about Ukraine and the West -- and “twice a day, a whole hour
of hatred” as well.

Whenever
Moscow television began to talk about the West, it became “gloomy, sarcastic and
angry,” but when it spoke about domestic affairs, the “voice of the zombie broadcaster
took on a sickeningly sweet tone, exactly like Soviet television, Magarshak
says.

Russian
viewers were encouraged to be joyful about new territorial acquisitions “not
because there is too little land in Russia but because a Russia that isn’t
expanding isn’t Russia just as a Universe which isn’t expanding isn’t a
Universe.”

The
duplicity continued. “The people of Ukraine were declared a fraternal people
... but at the very same time, [Moscow television labelled Ukrainians]
fascists, Nazis and Banderites.”

Moscow’s
involvement in Ukraine is obvious to the world, but “just like in the case of the
invasion in Prague, earlier in Hungary, and later the fraternal assistance to
Afghanistan,” the Russian authorities now follow the Soviet Law and insist that
what everyone can see is not in fact the case.

Magarshak suggests that Moscow’s vote for a UN
Security Council resolution on Iraq, a vote that was on its face a humane and
correct one, should have been the tip-off that the Kremlin was about to do
something terrible.And it did.

And
Putin’s statement in Austria that Moscow is not involved in Donetsk and Luhansk
was followed only two days later by “something especially terrifying,” the unification
of the two “peoples republics” into Novorossiya, something that anyone familiar
with the three Laws of Soviet reality would have expected.

The
“chief result” of Putin’s time in office has been that “Soviet power has again
come to Russia,” not with the goal of the construction of communism but rather
with a world in which there is “a fundamental lack of correspondence between
words and deeds,” exactly what one would expect of someone who is a KGB
officer.

“The
struggle for the establishment of a Fifth Rome (the third was the Empire of the
Romanovs, the fourth that of the Ulyanovs and Dzhugashvilis known under the
pseudonym of the Soviet Union) is in full swing and will continue.But there can be no doubt,” Magarshak
concludes, “that the Soviet Union has already been restored” in the Russian
Federation.

Staunton, June 30 – Western
sanctions and Ukraine’s decision to end arms exports to Russia have already
hurt some sectors of the economy and prompted some to call for making Russia
completely independent of the international economy, but such moves, a Moscow
commentator says, would only make Russia’s current problems even worse.

Viktor Dyatlovich, a journalist for “Russky
reporter,” has surveyed a number of branches of the Russian economy to see how
sanctions or a drive toward autarchy will affect those branches and the country
as a whole.His conclusions should be
sobering to Russians and others alike (expert.ru/russian_reporter/2014/24/za-kamennoj-stenoj/?partner=5687245).

While
Russia could do relatively well in maintaining its military capacity even if
there were no imports, the Russian people would suffer in major ways because of
their dependence on antibiotics because more than 95 percent of those either
are directly imported from abroad or contain imported components, something
Russian producers can do little about anytime soon.

No
country in the world, not even outcasts like North Korea or Iran is “completely
cut off from the rest of the world” or lacks the ability to “import raw
materials, goods, and technology” one way or another, Dyatlovich says.But one can use that possibility however
implausible to see how autarchy would affect the Russian Federation in key
branches.

The
journalist divides the branches he surveys into three groups.Group One includes the military-industrial
complex, construction, and metallurgy.These branches are the least dependent on imports already and could
albeit at the price of delays and higher costs shift relatively quickly to
domestic production.

There
would be a slow-down in the domestic production of weaponry like drones
possibly for several years. In construction, there would be small bottlenecks
but no basic problems. Experts say, the journalist reports, that in that area, “Russia
could move to complete self-supply tomorrow.”

Group
Two includes space exploration, agriculture, electronics, IT, machine building,
chcemisty and petroleum processing.In
these sectors, Dyatlovich says, Russia’s “dependence on imports is essential
but not critical.”A Russia cut off from
the world economy would have to spend more and would have lower quality
products, but it could do survive.

Complete autarchy in space exploration would be “a
complete utopia,” experts say. Russia currently imports 65-70 percent of the electronics
it needs in this sector.If it couldn’t
or wouldn’t do so, the country would have to rely on rockets developed in the 1950
and 1960s which had far fewer electronic components.That could be remedied with time.

The
average Russia wouldn’t notice this at least at first, the journalist continues.
Electronic items for personal use like smartphones and televisions would still be
available, although they would become “significantly more expensive. But that
is all.”

Russia
could even develop mines to obtain rare earth minerals needed in this sector,
although that would take time, and the relevant ministry has currently
allocated only 23 billion rubles (750 million US dollars)of the estimated145
billion rubles (40 billion US dollars) that would take.

Food
production would also suffer.Russia
currently imports 70 percent of its seed potatoes from abroad and much of its
meat. And ramping things up would be hard because the country now does not have
a single factory producing diesel motors for trackers and other farm
equipment.It could produce them but at
much higher costs and only over time.

Group
Three includes branches of the Russian economy that would be most seriously hit
by total sanctions or the pursuit of autarchy. They include light industry,
machine building, and medicine. In these sectors, there is little or no
possibility for a rapid substitution of imports with new domestic production.

Many
kinds of clothing would become unavailable. Machine tool building, “one of the
weakest links of [Russian] industry” and the base for many others, would not be
able to manage at all well. And critical medicines would become unavailable and
Russian public health would suffer enormously.

In
2006, Dyatlovich says, 99 percent of all machine tool purchases in terms of
price were from abroad. Now, the situation is slightly better but not much. And
many Russian firms in this area are going bankrupt, especially in high-rent
areas like Moscow.Reversing this would
be very, very hard.

But
in some ways, the sector that would be hardest hit by total sanctions or the
pursuit of autarchy would be in medicine.In 2012, the Russian governmentidentified 563 key medicines.Only 94 of them were produced by Russian companies. 202 were produced “exclusively
abroad” and imported. At present, “almost 95 percent of antibiotics in Russia
are prepared from imported components.”

This is, the journalist says, “a question of
national security,” although it is far from clear that the Kremlin agrees.
Before the USSR collapsed, the country produced “almost three hundred
substances for medicines. Now, it produces only a handful.And this branch will not be restored,
whatever efforts the government makes.”

In
Russia today, Dyatlovich says, “there simply are no bases for domestic
production of highly effective substances for antibiotics of the latest
generations.” Moreover, “in the course of the last two decades, the scientific
potential which would have allowed the rapid development of contemporary
substances has disappeared.”One figure alone highlights
this: At the present time, some 600 Russian pharmaceutical plans produce
medications which are significantly less effective than those of the same
category manufactured abroad.Changing
that is a matter of generations not months or even years. In the meantime, the
Russian people will suffer.